My Past and Thoughts

'\\"ell, I wish they'd settle it once for all.'

'I don't und<>rstand.'

'I mean, wh<>n are they going to punish me?'

'\\"hy, haven't they punished you? '

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'No.'

'Then how is it they have let you go? You are going home, aren't you?'

'Home, yes; but you see I keep thinking about the punishment.

The secretary did read it out.'

I could really make nothing of it, and at last asked him whether they had given him any sort of paper. He gave it me.

The whole verdict was written in it, and at the end it was stated that, punishment with the lash having been inflicted within the prison walls in accordance with the sentence of the Criminal Court, 'he was to be given a certificate to that effect and set free.'

I burst out laughing.

'Well, you have been punished already, then !'

'No, sir, I haven't.'

'Well, if you are dissatisfied, go back and ask them to punish you; perhaps the police will put themselves in your place, and see your point.'

Seeing that I was laughing, the old man smiled too, shaking his head dubiously and adding: 'Go on with you ! What strange doings!'

'How irregular! ' many people will say; but they must remember that it is only through such irregularity that life in Russia i s possible.

Appendix : Alex{l/l{Ler

L{tnren teniclz Vitber{j'

AMOI'G THE GROTESQUE and greasy, petty and loathsome people and scenes, files and titles, in this setting of official routine and red-tape, I recall the noble and melancholy features of an artist, who was crushed by the government with cold and callous cruelty.

The leaden hand of the Tsar not merely smothered a work of genius in its cradle, not merely destroyed the very creation of the artist, entangling him in judicial snares and the wiles of a police inquiry, but tried to snatch from him his honourable name altogether with his last crust of bread, and brand him as a taker of bribes and a pilferer of government funds.

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After ruining and disgracing A. L. Vitberg, Nicholas exiled him to Vyatka. It was there that we met.

For two years and a half I lived with the great artist and saw the strong man, who had fallen a victim to the autocracy of redtape officialdom and barrack-discipline, which blockishly measures everything in the world by the standard of the recruiting officer and the copying clerk's ruler, breaking down under the weight of persecution and misery.

It cannot be said that he succumbed easily; he struggled desperately for full ten years. He came into exile still hoping to confound his enemies and vindicate himself; he came, in a word, still ready for conflict, bringing plans and projects. But he soon discerned that all was over.

Perhaps he could have dealt even with this discovery, but he had at his side a wife and children and ahead of him years of exile, poverty, and privation; and Vitberg was turning grey, growing old, growing old not by the day but by the hour. When I left him in Vyatka at the end of two years he was ten years older.

Here is the story of this long martyrdom.

The Emperor Alexander did not believe it \'\'as his victory over Napoleon: he was oppressed by the fame of it and genuinely gave the glory to God. Always disposed to mysticism and melancholy, in which many people saw the fretting of conscience, he gave way to it particularly after the series of victories over Napoleon.

When 'the last soldiers of the enemy had crossed the frontier,'

Alexander issued a proclamation in which he vowed to raise in Moscow a huge temple to the Saviour.

Plans were invited from all sides, and a great competition was instituted.

Vitberg \vas at that time a young artist who had just completed his studies and won a gold medal for painting. A Swede by origin, he was born in Russia and at first was educated in the Engineers' Cadet Corps. The artist was enthusiastic, eccentric, and given to mysticism: he read the proclamation, read the appeal for plans, and flung aside all other pursuits. For days and nights he wandered about the streets of Petersburg, tormented by a persistent idea ; it was stronger than he was: he locked himsE-lf up in his room, took a pencil and set to work.

To no one in the world did he confide his design. After some months of work he went to Moscow to study the city and the surrounding country and set to work once more, shutting himself up for months together and keeping his design a secret.

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The date of the competition arrived. The plans were numerous: there were designs from Italy and from Germany and our Academicians sent in theirs. And the unknown young man sent in his among the rest. Weeks passed before the Emperor examined the plans. These were the forty days in the wilderness, days of temptation, doubt, and agonising suspense.

Vitberg's colossal design, filled with religious poetry, impressed Alexander. He came to a stop before it, and it was the first of which he inquired the authorship. They broke open the sealed envelope and found the unknown name of an Academy pupil.

Alexander desired to see Vitberg. He had a long talk with the artist. His bold and fervent language, his genuine inspiration and the mystical tinge of his convictions impressed the Emperor.

'You speak in stones,' he observed, examining Vitberg's design again.

That very day his design was accepted and Vitberg was chosen to be the architect and the director of the building committee.

Alexander did not know that with the laurel wreath he was putting a crown of thorns on the artist's head.

There is no art more akin to mysticism than architecture ; abstract, geometrical, mutely musical, passionless, it lives in symbol, in emblem, in suggestion. S imple l ines, their harmonious combination, rhythm, numerical relationships, make up something mysterious and at the same time incomplete. The building, the temple, is not its own object, as is a statue or a picture, a poem, or a symphony; a building requires an inmate; it is a place mapped and cleared for habitation, an environment, the cuirass of the tortoise, the shell of the mollusc; and the whole point of it is that the receptacl(' should correspond with its spirit, its object, its inmate, as the cuirass does with the tortoise.

The walls of the temple, its vaults and columns, its portal and fa<;ade, i ts foundation and its cupola must bear the imprint of the divinity that dwells within it, just as the convolutions of the brain are imprinted on the hone of the skull.

The Egyptian temples were their holy books. The obelisks were. sermons on the high-road.

Solomon's temple was the Bible turned into architecture; just as St Peter's in Rome is the architectural symbol of the escape from Catholicism, of the beginning of the lay world, of the beginning of the secularisation of mankind.

The very building of temples was so invariably accompanied by mystic rites, symbolical utterances, mysterious consecrations that the mediaeval builders looked upon themselves as some-

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thing apart, a kind of priesthood, the heirs of the builders of Solomon's temple, and made up secret guilds of stonemasons, which afterwards passed into Freemasonry.

From the time of the Renaissance architecture loses i ts properly mystical character. The Christian faith is struggling with philosophic doubt, the Gothic arch with the Greek pediment, spiritual holiness with "·ordly beauty. "'hat gives St Peter's its lofty significance is that in its colossal dimension Christianity struggles towards life, the church becomes pagan and on the walls of the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo paints Jesus Christ as a broad-shouldered athlete, a Hercules in the flower of his age and strength.

After St Peter's basilica, church architecture deteriorated completely and was reduced at last to simple repetition, on a larger or smaller scale, of the ancient Greek peripteries or of St Peter's.

One Parthenon is called St Madeleine's church in Paris; the other, the Stock Exchange in !'\"''" York.

'Vithout faith and without special circumstances, it was hard to create anything living: there is an air of artificiality, of hypocris�·, of anachronism, a bout all new churches, such as the five-domed cruet-stands with onions instead of corks in the Indo

Byzantine manner, which Nicholas builds, with Ton for architect, or the angular, Gothic churches, so offensive to the artistic eye, with which the English decorate their towns.

But the circumstances under which Vitberg created his design, his personality, and the state of mind of the Emperor were all exceptional.

The war of 1 8 1 2 had caused a violent upheaval in men's minds in Russia ; it was long after the deliverance of l\1oscow before the ferment of thought and nervous irritation could subside. Events outside Russia, the taking of Paris, the story of the Hundred Days, the suspense, the rumours, "'aterloo, Napoleon sailing owr the ocean, the mourning for fallen kinsmen, apprehension for tlw living, the returning troops, the soldiers going home, all had a violent effect on even the coarsest natures. Imagine a youthful artist, a mystic, gifted with creative power and at the same time a fanatic, under the influence of all that was happening, under the influence of the Tsar's challenge and his own genius.

Ncar :Moscow, between the Mozhaysk and Kaluga roads, there is a slight eminence which dominates the whole city. These are the Sparrow Hills of which I have spoken in the first reminiscences of my youth. The city lies stretched at their foot, and one of the most picturesque views of Moscow is from the top of them.

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Here Ivan the Terrible, at that time a young profligate, stood weeping and watching his capital burn ; here the priest Sylvester appeared before him and with stern words transformed that monster of genius for twenty years.

Napoleon with his army skirted this hill, here his strength was broken, it was at the foot of the Sparrow Hills that his retreat began.

Could a better spot be found for a temple to commemorate the year 1812 than the furthest point which the enemy reached?

But this was not enough: the hill itself was to be turned into the lower part of the temple; the open ground down to the river was to be encircled by a colonnade, and on this base, built on three sides by nature itself, a second and a third temple were to be raised, making up a marvellous whole.

Vitberg's temple, like the chief dogma of Christianity, was threefold and indivisible.

The lowest temple, carved out of the hill, had the form of a parallelogram, a coffin, a body: its exterior formed a heavy portal supported by almost Egyptian columns, and it merged into the hill, into rough, unhewn nature. This temple was lit up by lamps in tall Etruscan candelabra, and the daylight filtered sparsely into it from the second temple, passing through a transparent picture of the Nativity. In this crypt all the heroes who had fallen in 1812 were to be laid to rest. An eternal requiem was to be said for those slain on the field of battle; the names of all of them, from generals to private soldiers, were to be carved upon the walls.

Upon this tomb, upon this graveyard, the second temple-the temple of outstretched hands, of life, of suffering, of labour-was laid out in the form of a Greek cross with its four equal arms.

The colonnade leading to it was decorated with statues from figures of the Old Testament. At the entrance stood the prophets: they stood outside the temple pointing the way which they were not destined to tread. The whole story of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles was depicted within this temple.

Above it, crowning it and completing it, was a third temple in the form of a dome. This temple, brightly lit, was the temple of the spirit of untroubled peace, of eternity, expressed in its circular plan. Here there were neither pictures nor sculpture, only on the outside it was encircled by a ring of archangels and was covered by a colossal cupola.

I am now giving from memory Vitberg's main idea. He had it worked out to the minutest detail ard everywhere perfectly in harmony with Christian theology and architectural beauty.

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The amazing man spent his whole life over his design. During the ten years that he was on his trial he was occupied with nothing else and, though harassed by poverty and privation in exile, he devoted several hours every day to his temple. He lived in it, he did not believe that it would never be built; memories, consolations, glory, all were in the artist's portfolio.

Perhaps one day some other artist, after the martyr's death, will shake the dust off those sheets and with reverence publish that architectural martyrology, in which was spent and wasted a life full of strength-for a moment i lluminated by radiant light, then smudged and crushed among a drill-sergeant Tsar, serfsenators, and pettifogging ministers.

The design was a work of genius, frightening, almost mad ; that was why Alexander chose it, that i s why it ought to have been carried out. It \Vas said that the hill could not have borne the weight of the temple. I find that incredible, especially if we remember all the new resources of American and Engli sh engineers, the tunnels which a train takes eight minutes to pass through, the cha in-bridges, and so on.

Miloradovich1 advised Vitberg to make the thick columns of the lower temple of single blocks of granite. On this someone observed that it would be very expensive to bring the granite blocks from Finland.

'That is just why we ought to order them,' answered Miloradovich ; 'if there were a granite-quarry on the River Moskva there would be nothing wonderful in putting them up.'

Miloradovich was a warrior poet and he understood poetry in genPral. Grand things are done by grand means.

Only nature does great things for nothing.

Even those who never had any doubt of Vitberg's honesty blame him most for having undertaken the duty of directing operations, though he was an inexperienced young artist who knew nothing of official business. He ought to have confined himself to the part of architect. That is true.

But it is easy to make such criticisms sitting at home in one's study. He undertook it just because he was young, inexperienced, and an artist; he undertook it because, when his design had been acceptPd, everything seemed easy to him; he undertook it because the Tsar himself had proposed it to him, encouraged him, supported him. Is there any man whose head would not have been turned? . . . Are there any so prudent, so sober, so re-1 Sec p. 1 0, fn. 1 0. (D.M.)

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strained? Well, if there are, they do not design colossal temples nor do they make 'stones speak' !

It need hardly be said that Vitberg was surrounded by a crowd of rogues, men who look on Russia as a field for speculation, on the service as a profitable line of business, on a public post as a lucky chance to make a fortune. It was easy to understand that they would dig a pit under Vitberg's feet. But that, after falling into it, he should be unable to get out again, was due a lso to the envy of some and the wounded vanity of others.

Vitberg's colleagues on the committee were the metropolitan Filaret, the Governor-General of Moscow,2 and Senator Kushnikov; they were all offended in advance by being associated with a young puppy, especially as he gave his opinion boldly and objected when he did not agree.

They helped to get him into trouble, they helped to slander him and with cold-blooded indifference completed his ruin afterwards.

They were helped in this first by the fall of the mysticallyminded minister Prince A. N. Golitsyn, and afterwards by the death of Alexander.

With the fall of Golitsyn came the collapse of Freemasonry, of the Bible Societies, of Lutheran pietism, which in the persons of Magnitsky3 at Kazan and of Runich4 in Petersburg ran to grotesque extremes, to savage persecutions, to convulsive dances, to states of hysteria and God knows what strange doings.

Savage, coarse, ignorant orthodoxy had the upper hand. It was preached by Foty5 the archimandrite of Novgorod, who lived on intimate terms (not physically, of course) with Countess Orlov.

The daughter of the well known Alexey Grigorevich Orlov who smothered Peter III, she hoped to \Yin redemption for her father's soul by devoting herself to frenzied fanaticism, by giving up to Foty and his monastery the greater part of her enormous estates, which had been forcibly seized from the monasteries by Catherine.

But the one thing in which the Petersburg government i s 2 Prince Q . V . Golitsyn. (A.S.)

3 Magnitsky, Mikhail Leontevich ( 1 778-1855 ) , reactionary official and mystic; \Varden of Kazan educational district and University, 1 820-6.

(A.S.)

4 Runich, Dmitry Pavlovich ( 1 778-1860), reactionary official and mystic; Warden of Petersburg education district, 1 821-6. ( A.S. ) 5 Foty ( 1 792-1838), archimandrite of the Yurevsky monastery at Novgorod. He took part in palace intrigues under Alexander I, and influenced his reactionary policy. (A .S.)

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persistent, the one thing in which it does not change, howeve.- its principles and religion may change, is its unjust oppression and persecution. The fury of the Runiches and the Magnitskys was turned against the Runiches and the Magnitskys. The Bible Society, only yesterday patronised and approved-the prop of morality and religion-was to-day closed and sealed, and its members put almost on the level of counterfeit coiners; the Messenger of Zion, only yesterday recommended to all fathers of families, wns more severely prohibited than Voltaire and Diderot, and its editor, Labzin, was exiled to Vologda.

Prince A. N. Golitsyn's downfall involved Vitberg; everyone fell upon him, the committee complained of him, the metropolitan was offended and the Governor-General was dissatisfied. His answers were 'insolent' ('insolence' is one of the principal charges in the indictment of him ) ; his subordinates were thieves

-as though there was any one in the government service >vho was not a thief. Though indeed it is likely that there was more thieving among Vitberg's subordinates than among others; he had had no practice in superintending houses of correction and highly placed thieves.

Alexander commanded Arakcheyev to investigate the case. He was sorry for Vitberg; he let him know through one of his intimates that he believed in his rectitude.

But Alexander died and Arakcheyev fell. Under Nicholas Vitberg's case at once took a turn for the worse. It dragged on for ten years, with incredible absurdities. On the points on which he was found guilty by the Criminal Court he was acquitted by the Senate. On those on which he was acquitted by the Court he was found guilty by the Senate. The committee of ministers found him guilty on all the charges. The Tsar, taking a dvantage of the 'best privilege of monarchs, to show mercy and mitigate punishment,' added exile to Vyatka to his sentence.

And so Vitberg was sent into exile, dismissed from the service

'for abuse of the confidence of the Emperor Alexander and causing loss to the treasury.' He was fined, I believe, a million roubles, all his property was seized and sold at public auction, and a rurnour was circulated that he had transferred countless millions to America.

I lived in the same house with Vitberg for two years and remained on intimate terms with him up to the time I left Vyatka. He had not saved the barest crust of bread ; his family lived in the most frightful poverty.

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Two years after Vitberg's exile the merchants of Vyatka formed a project to build a new church.

Nicholas, being desirous of killing all spirit of independence, of individuality, of imagination, and of freedom, every,vhere and in everything, published a whole volume of frontages fQr churches sanctioned by His Majesty. If anyone \vanted to build a church he was absolutely obliged to select one of the government plans. He is said to have forbidden the writing of Russian operas, considering that even those written by the adjutant Lvov, in the Third Division of his own Chancellery, were good for nothing.

But that was not enough: he ought to have published a collection of musical airs sanctioned by His Majesty!

The Vyatka merchants after turning over the 'approved' plans had the audacity to differ from the Tsar's taste. Nicholas marvelled at the design they sent in; he sanctioned it and sent instructions to the provincial authorities to see that the architect's ideas were faithfully carried out.

'Who made this design?' he asked the secretary.

'Vitberg, your Majesty.'

'What, the same Vitberg?'

'The same, your Majesty.'

And behold, like a bolt from the blue, comes permiSSIOn for Vitberg to return to Moscow or Petersburg. The man had asked leave to clear his character and it had been refused; he made a successful design, and the Tsar bade him return-as though anyone had ever doubted his artistic ability . . . .

In Petersburg, almost perishing of want, he made one last effort to defend his honour. It was utterly unsuccessful. Vitberg asked the assistance of A. N. Golitsyn, but the latter thought it impossible to raise the case again, and advised Vitberg to \vrite a plaintive letter to the Heir with a request for financial assistance. He undertook to do his best for him with the assistance of Zhukovsky,6 and promised to get him a thousand siln•r roubles.

Vitberg refused.

I was in Petersburg for the last time at the beginning of the 6 Zhukovsky, Vasily Andreyevich, ( 1 783-1 852) . the well knmm poet, was tutor to the Tsarc\·ich. afterwards AlexnndPr I I. He was a man of fine and generous charactPr. His original •mrk is not of the first order, but as a translator from the European a nd classical languages he was of i nvaluable service in the developmPnt of Russian culture. ( Tr.)

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winter of 1 846 and there saw Vitberg. He was completely crushed. Even his old wrath against his enemies which I had liked so much had begun to die down; he had no more hope, he did nothing to escape from his situation, blank despair was bringing him to his end, all the components of this existence had broken down and he was waiting for death.

If this was what Nicholas Pavlovich wanted he may be satisfied.

Whether the sufferer is still living I do not know, but I doubt it.

'If it were not for my family, my children,' he said at parting,

'I should tear myself away from Russia and go begging alms about the world. \Vith the Vladimir Cross on my neck I would calmly hold out to passers-by the hand pressed by the Emperor Alexander and tell them of my design and the fate of an artist in Russi a ! '

'They shall hear i n Europe o f your fate, poor martyr,' I thought; 'I will answer for that.'

The society of Vitberg was a great solace to me in Vyatka. A grave serenity and a solemnity in his manner lent him something of a priestly air. He was a man of very pure morals and in general more disposed to asceticism than indulgence; but his severity did not detract from the wealth and luxuriance of his artistic nature. He could give to his mysticism so plastic a form and so exquisite a colouring that criticism died away on one's lips; one was sorry to analyse, to dissect the glittering images and misty pictures of his imagination.

Vitberg's mysticism was partly due to his Scandinavian blood; it 'vas the same coldly-thought-out visionariness that we see in Swedenborg, and which in its turn is like the fiery reflection of sunbeams in the icy mountains and snows of Norway.

Vitberg's influence made me waver, but my realistic temperament nevertheless gained the upper hand. I was not destined to rise into the third heaven: I 'vas born a quite earthly creature.

No tables turn at the touch of my hands nor do rings swing at my glance. The daylight of thought is more akin to me than the moonlight of phantasy.

But I was more disposed to mysticism at the period when I was living with VitbPrg than at any otlwr timP.

Separation, exile, the religious exaltation of the letters I was receiving, the love which was filling my heart more and more intensely, and at the same time the oppressive feeling of remorse, a l l reinforced Vitberg's influence.

And for two years afterwards I was under the influence of

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ideas of a mystical socialist tinge, drawn from the Gospel and from Jean-Jacques, after the style of French thinkers like Pierre Leroux.7

Ogarev plunged into the sea of mysticism even before I did. In 1833 he was beginning to write the words for Gebel's8 oratorio, The Lost Paradise. 'In the idea of a "Lost Paradise," ' Ogarev wrote to me, 'there is the whole history of humanity' ; so at that time, he too mistook the paradise of the ideal that we are seeking

-

for a paradise we have lost.

In 1 838 I wrote historical scenes in the religious socialist spirit, and at the time took them for dramas. In some I pictured the conflict of the pagan world with Christianity. In these Paul entering Rome raised a dead youth to a new life. In others I described the conflict of the official Church with the Quakers and the departure of William Penn to America, to thr New World.9

The mysticism of the Gospel was soon replaced in me by the mysticism of science ; fortunately I rid myself of the second also.

7 Leroux, Pierre ( 1 797-187 1 ) , a follower of Saint-Simon, of the first half of the nineteenth century. ( Tr.)

S Gebel, Franz ( 1 787-1 843) . a well known musical composer of th£'

period. ( Tr.)

!l I thought fit, I don't understand why, to write these scenes in verse.

Probably I thought that anybody could write unrhymed fiw-foot iambics, since even Pogodin" wrote them. In 1 838 or 1 8.W, I gave both the manuscripts to Belinsky to read and calmly awaited his praises. But the next day Belinsky sent them back to me with a note in which he said: "Do please haYe them copied to run on without being divided into lines, then I will read them with pleasure, but as it is I am bothered all the time by the idea that they are in verse.'

Belinsky killed both my dramatic efforts. It is always pleasant to pay one's debts. In 1 84 1 Belinsky published a long dialogue upon literature in the Notes of the Fatherland. 'How do you like my last article?' he asked me, as we were dining together en petit comite at Dusseau's. 'Very much,' I answered. 'All that you say is excellent, but tell me, please, how could you go on struggling for two hours talking to that man without seeing at the first word that he was a fool?' 'That's perfectly true,'

said Belinsky, dying with laughter. 'Well, my boy, that's killing! Why, he is a perfect fool!'

• Pogodin, Mikhail Petrovich ( 1 800-5 ) , chiefly known as a historian of a peculiar Slavophil tinge, was co-editor with Shevyrev of the Moskvityanin, a reactionary journal, and wrote historical novels of little merit. ( Tr. )

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Tlze rTS{trenic/1' s /�·sit

THE HEIR will visit Vyatka ! The Heir is travelling about Russia to show himself and look at the country! This news interested everyone, but the governor, of course, more than any. He was harassed and did a number of incredibly stupid things: ordered the peasants along the high-road to be dressed in their holiday caft;ms. ordPr!'d tlw fpnces in the towns to be painted and the sidewalks to be repair!'d. At Orlov a poor widow who owned a small house told the mayor that she had no money to repair the sidewalk and he reported this to the governor. The latter ordered the floors in the house to be taken up (the sidewalks there are made of wood ). and tha t, should thev not be sufficient, the repairs should be made at the governm�nt expense and the money recovered from her afterwards, even if it were necessary to sell her house at public illiction. Things did not go so far as a sale, but the widow's floors were broken up.

Fifty versts from V•;atka is the place at which the wonderworking ikon of St Nicholas of Khlynov appeared to the people of l'\ovgorod. \\'hen f'migrants from Novgorod settled at Khlynov (now Vyatka ) they brought the ikon, bnt it disappeared and turned up again on the Great River fifty versts from Vyatka.

They ff'tched it back again, and at the same time took a vow that if the ikon would stay they would carry it every year in a solemn procession to the Grea t River. This was the chief summer holiday in the Vya tka province; I believe it is on the 23rd of

:\Iav . For twentv-four hours the ikon travels do,vn the river on a magnificent raft with the bishop and all the clergy in full vestmPnts accompanying it. Hundreds of all sorts of boats, rafts, and dug-out canocs fi lled with pf'asants, money and women, Votyaks.

and artisans follow the sailing image in a motley throng, and foremost of all is thP gowrnor's deckf'd boa t covered with red cloth. This barbaric spectacle is very fine. Tens of thousands of people from districts ncar and far wait for the image on the banks of the Grea t River. They all camp in noisy crowds about a small villagc, and. what is strangest of alL crowds of unbaptised Votyaks, Chcr!'mises, and even Tatars come to pray to the i mage; indeed, the festival has a thoroughly pagan appearance. Outside

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the monastery-wall Votyaks and Russians bring sheep and calves to be sacrificed; they are killed on the spot, a monk reads a service over them, and blesses and consecrates the meat, which is sold at a special window within the precincts. The meat is distributed i n pieces to the people ; in the old days it used to be given for nothing: now the monks charge a few kopecks for every piece; so that a peasant who had presented a whole calf has to pay something for a piece of his own consumption. In the monastery-yard sit whole crowds of beggars, the halt, the blind, the deformed of all sorts, who sing 'Lazar' in chorus.1 Ladspriests' sons or boys from the town-sit on the tombstones near the church with inkpots2 and cry: 'Who wants lists written?

Who wants lists?' Peasant girls and women surround them, mentioning names, and the lads, deftly scratching with their pens, repeat: 'Marya, Marya, Akulina, Sepanida, Father Ioann, Matrena . . . . Well, Auntie, you have got a lot; you've shelled out two kopecks, we can't take less than five ; such a family

Joann, Vasilisa, Iona, Marya, Yezpraxia, Baby Katerina . . . .'

In the church there is much jostling and strange preferences are shown ; one peasant woman will hand her neighbour a candle with exact instructions to put it up 'for our guest,' another gives one for 'our host." The Vyatka monks and deacons are continually drunk during the whole time of this procession.

They stop at the bigger villages on the way, and the peasants treat them to enough to kill them.

So this popular holiday, to which the peasants had been accustomed for ages, the governor proposed to move to an earlier date, wishing to entertain the Tsarevich who was to arrive on the 19th of May; he thought there would be no harm in St Nicholas, the guest, going on his visit to his host three days earlier. Of course the consent of the bishop was necessary; fortunately he was an amenable person, and found nothing to protest at in the governor's intention of celebrating the 23rd of May on the 19th.

The governor sent a list of his ingenious plans for the reception of the Tsarevich to the Tsar-as though to say, 'See how we fete your son.' On reading this document the Tsar flew into a rage, and said to the Minister of Home Affairs: 'The governor and the bishop are fools; leave the holiday as it was.' The Minister gave the governor a good scolding, the Synod did the I A plaintive. wheedlin:.; son:.; sung by beggars. (R.) 2 The lists of names were sent up to the priest, who said a prayer for the owner of each name. (R.)

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same t o the bishop, and St Nicholas the guest kept t o his old habits.

Among the various instructions from Petersburg, orders came that in every provincial town an exhibition should be held of the various natural products and handicrafts of the district, and that the things exhibited should be arranged according to the three natural kingdoms. This division into animal, vegetable and mineral greatly worried the officials, and even Tyufyayev to some extent. In order not to make a mistake he made up his mind in spite of his ill will to summon me to give advice.

'Now, for instance, honey,' he said, '\vhere would you put honey? or a gilt frame-how are you to decide where it is to go? '

Seeing from m y ans\vers that I had wonderfully precise information concerning the three natural kingdoms, he offered me the task of arranging the exhibition.

\Vhile I was busy arranging wooden vessels and Votyak dresses, honey and iron sieves, and Tyufyayev went on taking the most ferocious measures for the entertainment of his Imperial Highness at Vyatka, the Highness in question was graciously pleased to arrive at Orlov, and the news of the a rrest of the mayor of Orlov burst like a clap of thunder on the town.

Tyufyayev turned yellow, and there was an uncertainty apparent in his gait.

Five days before the Tsarevich arrived at Orlov, the mayor had written to Tyufyayev that the widow whose floor had been broken up to make the sidev'>·alk was making a fuss, and that Soand-so, a wealthy merchant and a prominent person in the town,

\vas boasting that he would tell the Tsarevich everything.

Tyufyayev disposed of the man very cleverly; he told the mayor to have doubts of his sanity ( the precedent of Petrovsky pleased him3 ) , and to send him to Vyatka to be examined by the doctors; while the affair was going on the Tsarevich vvould have left the province of Vyatka, and that \Vould be the end of it. The mayor did as he was bid ; the merchant was in the hospital at Vyatka.

At last the Tsarevich arrived.4 He gave Tyufyayev a frigid bow, did not invite him to visit him, but at once sent Dr Enokhin to examine the arrested merchant. He knew all about it. The Orlov widow had given him her petition; the other mprchants and townsmen had told him all that was going on.

Tyufyayev's face was more avvry than ever. Things looked black

:J SeC' pp. 1 76-7. ( D.M.)

4 1 8th May, 1 837. ( A .S.)

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21 3

for him. The mayor said straight out that he had had written instructions for everything from the governor.

Dr Enokhin declared that the merchant was perfectly sane.

Tyufyayev was lost.

Between seven and eight in the evening the Tsarevich visited the exhibition with his suite. Tyufyayev conducted him, explaining things incoherently, getting into a muddle and speaking of a

'Tsar Tokhtamysh.'5 Zhukovsky and Arsenev, seeing that things were not going well, asked me to show them the exhibition: I took them round.

The Tsarevich's expression had none of that narrow severity, that cold, merciless cruelty which was characteristic of his father; his features were more suggestive of good nature and listlessness. He was about twenty, but was already beginning to grow stout.

The few words he said to me were friendly and very different from the hoarse, abrupt tones of his Uncle Constantine and without his father's custom of making his hearer almost faint with terror.

When he had gone away Zhukovsky and Arsenev began asking me how I had come to Vyatka . They were surprised to hear a Vyatka official speak like a gentleman. They at once offered to speak of my situation to the Tsarevich, and did in fact do all that they could for me. The Tsarevich approached the Tsar for permission for me to travel to Petersburg. The Tsar replied that that would be unfair to the other exiles, but, in consideration of the Tsarevich's representations, he ordered me to be transferred to Vladimir which was geographically an improvement, being seven hundred versts nearer home. But of that later.

In the evening there was a ball at the Assembly Rooms. The musicians who had been sent for expressly from one of the factories had arrived dead drunk; the governor had arranged that they should be locked up for twenty-four hours before the ball, escorted straight from the police-station to their seats in the orchestra, which none of them should be allowed to leave till the ball was over.

The ball was a stupid, awkward, extremely poor and extremely gaudy affair, as balls always are in little towns on exceptional occasions. Police officers fussed about, government 5 The Tatar khan of the Golden Horde, who in 1 382 sacked the Kremlin at Moscow and massacred 24,000 people. (R.)

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2 1 4

officials in uniform huddled against the wall, ladies flocked round the Tsarevich as savages do round travellers . . . . A propos the ladies, in one little town a gouter was arranged after the exhibition. The Tsarevich took nothing but one peach, the stone of which he threw on the window-sill. Suddenly a tall figure saturated with spirits stepped out from the crowd of officials; it was the district assessor, notoriously a dissolute character, who with measured steps approached the window, picked up the stone and put it in his pocket.

After the ball or the gouter, he approached one of the ladies of most consequence and offered her the stone gnawed by royalty; the lady was in raptures. Then he approached a second, then a third : all were in ecstasies.

The a ssessor had bought fiye peaches, cut out the stones, and made six ladies happy. Which had the real one? Each was suspicious of the genuineness of her own stone. . . .

After the departure of the Tsarevich, Tyufyayev with a heavy heart prepared to exchange his pashalik for the chair of a senator; but worse than tha t happened.

Three weeks later the post brought from Petersburg papers addressed to 'the administrator of the province.' Everything was turned upside down in the secretariat; the registrar ran in to say that they had received an uka:.:; the officer manager rushed to Tyufyayev ; Tyufyayev gave out that he was ill and did not go to the office.

Within an hour we learned that he had been dismissed sans phrase.

The \vhole town was delighted at the fall of the governor; there was something stifling, unclean, about his rule, a fetid odour of red tape, but for all that it was nasty to watch the rejoicings of the officials.

Yes, every ass gave a parting kick to this wounded boar. The meanness of men was just as apparent as at the fall of Napoleon, though the catastrophe was on a different scale. Of late I had been on tPrms of open hostility with him, and he would have certainly sPnt me off to some obscure little town such as Kav, if he had not been sPnt away himself. I had held aloof from him, and I had no reason to change my bPhaviour to him. But the others, who only the day before had bPen cap in hand to him, who had grudged him his carriage, eagerly anticipating his wishes. fawning on his dog and offering snuff to his valet, now barely grePtPd him and made an outcry all over the town against the irregularities, thf' guilt of which thcr shared with him. This

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21 5

is nothing ne,v; it has been repeated so continually in every age and in every place that we must accept this meanness as a common trait of humanity a nd a t a ny rate feel no surprise a t it.

The new governor, Kornilov, arrived. He was a man of quite a different type: a talL stout, lymphntic man of about fifty with a pleasantly smiling face and a cultured manner. He expressed himself \Vith unusual ordinary grammatical correctness, and at great length, with a precision and clarity calculated by the1r very excess to obscure the simplest subject. He had bPen at tlw Lyceum of Tsarskoye Selo. had been a schoolfellow of Pushkin's, had served in the Guards, bought the new French books, liked talking of important subjects, and gave me Tocqueville's book on democracy in America on the day after his arrival.

The change was very striking. The same rooms, the same furniture, but instead of a Tatar baskak (tnx-collector) , with the exterior of a Tungus and the habits of a Siberian-a doctrinaire, something of a pedant, but at the same time qui te a decent man.

The new govPrnor was intelligent, but his intelligence seemed somehow to slwd light without gi dng warmth. like a bright, winter day which is pleasant though one does not look for fruits from it. 1\:loreover, he wns a terrible formalist-not in a pettifogging way, but . . . how shall I express it? . . . it was formalism of the second degree, but just as tiresome as a ny other.

Since the new governor was really married, the house lost its ultrn-bachelor and polygamous character. Of course this brought all the councillors back to their lawful spouses; bald old men no longer boasted of their conquests a mong the fair, but, on the contrary, n l luded tenderly to tlwir fadPd. stiff. nngularly bony, or monstrously fat wives.

Kornilov had some years before coming to Vyatka been promoted to be civil governor somewhere, straight from being a colonel in the Semcnovskv or Izmaylonky rc>giment. He went to his province knowing nothing of his dutic>s. To begin with, like all novices, he set to work to read everything. One da:v a document came to him from another province which he could make nothing of, though he read it two or three times.

He called the secrctary and gn,·e it to him to read. The secretary could not explain the business clearly either.

'What will you do with that document,' Kornilov asked him,

'if I pass it on to the office?'

'I shall hand it in to the third table, it's their job.'

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2 1 6

'Then the head-clerk o f the third table knows what t o do?'

'To be sure he does, Your Excellency, he has been in charge of that table for seven years.'

'Send him to me.'

The head-clerk came in. Kornilov handed him the paper and asked what was to be done. The head-clerk glanced through the file and informed him that they ought to make an inquiry in the palace of justice and send an order to the police-captain.

'But order what?'

The head-clerk was nonplussed, and at last admitted that it was difficult to express it in words, but thnt it was easy to write it.

'Here is a chair: please write the answer.'

The head-clerk took up the pen and without hesitation briskly scribbled off two documents.

The governor took them, read them once, read them twice, but could make nothing of them.

'I saw,' he told me, smiling, 'that it really \vas an answer to the document, and I thanked God and signed it. Nothing more was heard of the business-the answer was completely satisfactory.'

The news of my transfer to Vladimir came just before Christmas; I was soon ready and set off.

My parting with Vyatka society was very warm. In that remote town I had made two or three genuine friends a mong the young merchants.

Everyone vied in showing sympathy and kindness to the exile.

Several sledges accompnnied me as far as the first postingstation, and in spite of all my efforts to defend myself my sledge was filled up with a perfect load of provisions and wine. Next day I reached Yaransk.

From Yaransk the road goes through endless pine forests. It was moonlight and very frosty at night. The little sledge flew along the narrow road. I ha\·e never seen such forests since; they go on likl' thnt unbwkl'n as fa r as Arkhang-r·l. and sonwtimes reindeer coml' through tlwm to tlw pr0\·inc1• of Vyatka. The forest is for the most part composed of large trees; the pines, extraordinarily strnight, ran past the sledge like soldiers, tall and covered with snow from under which their black needles stuck out like bristles; one would drop asleep and wake up again and still the regiments of pines would be marching rapidly by, sometimes shaking off the snow. The horses are changed at little clearings ; there is a tiny house lost among the trees, the horsl's are tied up to a trunk, the sledge-bells begin tinkling, and two or three Cheremis boys in embroidered shirts run out, looking

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21 7

sleepy. The Votyak driver swears at his companion in a husky alto, shouts 'Ayda,' begins singing a song on two notes . . . and again pines and snow, snow and pines.

Just as I drove out of Vyatka Province it was my lot to take my last farewell of the official world, and it showed itself in all its glory pour La cloture.

We stopped at a posting-station, and the driver had begun unharnessing the horses, when a tall peasant appeared in the porch and asked:

'Who is travelling through?'

'What's that to do with you?'

'Why, the police-captain told me to inquire, and I am the messenger of the rural court.'

'Well then, go into the station hut; my travelling permit is there.'

The peasant went away and came back a minute later, saying to the driver,

'He is not to have horses.'

That was too much. I jumped out of the sledge and went into the hut. A half-tipsy police-captain was sitting on a bench, dictating to a half-tipsy clerk. A man with fetters on his hands and feet was sitting or rather lying on another bench in the corner.

Several bottles, glasses, tobacco ash, and bundles of papers were scattered about.

'Where is the police-captain?' I asked in a loud voice as I went In.

'The police-captain's here,' answered the half-tipsy man whom I recognised as Lazarev, a man I had seen in Vyatka. As he spoke he fixed a rude and impudent stare upon me-and suddenly rushed at me with open arms.

I must explain that after Tyufyayev's dismissal the officials, seeing that I was on quite good terms with the new governor, had begun to be rather afraid of me.

I stopped him with my hand and asked him very gravely,

'How could you give orders that I shouldn't have horses?

What nonsense is this, stopping travellers on the high-road?'

'Why, I was joking; upon my soul, aren't you ashamed to be angry? Here, horses, order the horses! Why are you standing there, you rascal?' he shouted to the messenger. 'Do me the favour of having a cup of tea with rum.'

'Thank you very much.'

'But haven't we any champagne?

' He hurried to the

bottles; they were all empty.

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2 1 8

'What are you doing here?'

'An inquiry, sir. This fine fellow here has killed his father and sister with an axe, in a quarrel, through jealousy.'

The police-captain was disconcerted. I glanced at the Cheremis; he was a young fellow of tv•;enty, with nothing savage about his facP. which was typically Oriental, with shining, narrow eyes and black hair.

It \Yas all so nasty that I v\·ent out into the yard again. The police-captain ran out after me with a glass in one hand and a bottle of rum in the other, and pressPd me to have a drink.

To get rid of him I drank some; he caught hold of my hand and said:

'I am sorry, there, I am sorry! there it is, but I hope you won't speak of this to His ExcPllency ; don't ruin an honourable man! '

With that the police-captain seized my hand and kissed it, repeating a dozen times over:

'For God's sake don't ruin an honourable man.'

I pulled away my hand in disgust and said to him:

'Oh get away; as though I were likely to tell him.'

'But how can I be of service to you?'

'See they make haste and harness the horses.'

'Look alive,' he shouted, 'Ayda, ayda ! ' and he himself began dragging at some ropes and straps of the harness.

This incident is vividly imprinted on my memory. In 1846, when I was in Petersburg for the last time, I had to go to the secretariat of the Minister of Home Affairs to try to get a passport. While I was talking to the head-clerk of the table, a gentleman passed . . . shaking hands familiarly with the magnates of the secretariat and bowing condescendingly to the head-clerks of the tables. 'Bah, devil take it,' I thought, 'can that be he!'

'Who is that?' I asked.

'Lazarev, a clerk of special commissions and of great influence with the Minister.'

'Was he once a police-captain in the Vyatka Province?'

'Yes.'

'Well, I congratulate you, gentlemen: nine years ago he kissed my hand.'

Petrovsky was a mastl•r hand at choosing men !

Prison and Exile

2 1 9

The Begil1ning of

l\1y Life (lt V/(tdilrzir

WHEN 1 WENT ouT to get into my sledge a t Kosmodemyansk i t was harnessed i n the Russian style, with three horses abreast: one between the shafts and two flanking it. The shaft horse, with i ts yoke, rang the bells gaily.

In Perm and Vyatka the horses are put in tandem, one before the other or two side by side and the third in front.

So my heart throbbed with delight when I saw the familiar troika.

'Come now, show us your mettle,' I said to the young lad who sat smartly in the driver's seat in a sheepskin coat, the bare side turned outwards, and stiff gauntlets which barely allowed his fingers to close enough to take fifteen kopecks from my hand.

'We'll do our best, sir, we'll do our best. Hey, darlings! Now, sir,' he said, turning suddenly to me, 'you just hold on ; there is a hill yonder, so I'll let them go.'

It was a steep descent to the Volga ; in the winter the way lay across the ice.

He certainly did let the horses go. The sledge did not so much run as bound from right to left, from left to right, as the horses whirled it down-hill ; the driver was tremendously pleased, and indeed, sinful man that I am, so was l-it is the Russian temperament.

So my post-horses brought me into 1 838-into the best, the brightest year of my life. I shall describe how we saw the New Year in.

Eighty versts from Nizhny i\'ov�orod we. that is Matvey, my valet, and I, went into the station-superintendent's to warm ourselves. There was a very sharp frost, and it was windy too.

The superintendent, a thin, sickly, pitiful-looking man, inscribed my travelling permit, dictating every letter to himself and yet making mistakes. I took off my fur-lined coat and walked up and down the room in my huge fur boots, Matvey was warming himself at the red-hot stove, the superintendent muttered, and a wooden clock ticked on a faint, cracked note.

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'I say,' Matvey said to me, 'it will soon be twelve o'clock ; i t's the New Year, you know. I'll bring in something,' he added, looking at me half-inquiringly, 'from the stores they put in our sledge at Vyatka.' And without waiting for an answer he ran to fetch bottles and a bag with some food.

Matvey, of whom I shall have more to say later, was more than a servant: he was a friend, a younger brother to me. A man of Moscow, apprenticed to Sonnenberg, whose acquaintance we shall also make, to learn the art of bookbinding, in which Sonnenberg, however, was not very proficient, he passed into my hands.

I knew that if I refused it would disappoint Matvey, and besides I had nothing against celebrating the day at the postingstation. . . . The New Year is a station of a sort.

Matvey brought ham and champagne.

The champagne turned out to be frozen solid ; the ham could have been chopped with an axe, and was all glistening with ice; but a la guerre comme a la guerre.

'May the New Year bring new happiness.' Yes indeed, new happiness. Was I not on the way back? Every hour was bringing me nearer to Moscow-my heart was full of hopes.

The frozen champagne did not exactly please the superintendent. I added half a glass of rum to his wine. This new 'half-andhal£'1 was very successful.

The driver, whom I had also invited to join us, was still more extreme in his views; he sprinkled pepper into his glass of foaming wine, stirred it with a spoon, drank it off at one gulp, uttered a painful sigh and almost with a moan added: 'It did scorch fine!'

The superintendent himself tucked me into the sledge, and was so zealous in his attentions that he dropped the lighted candle into the hay and could not find it afterwards. He was in great spirits and kept repeating:

'You've given me a New Year's Eve, too ! '

The scorched driver started the horses off.

At eight o'clock on the following evening I reached Vladimir and put up at the hotel, which is extremely faithfully described in V. A. Sollogub's Tarantas with its fowls in rice, its dough-like patissrrie, and vinegar by way of Bordeaux.

'A man was asking for you this morning, he's probably waiting at the beer-shop,' the waiter told me after reading my name I In English in the text. ( R . )

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221

on my travel permit. He wore the rakish parting and dashing lovelocks, which in old days were only affected by Russian waiters, but now are also wom by Louis Napoleon.

I could not conceive who this could be.

'But here he is, sir,' added the waiter, moving aside. What I saw first, however, was not a man but a tray of terrific size, on which were piles of all sorts of good things, a cake and cracknels, oranges and apples, eggs, almonds, raisins . . . and behind the tray appeared the grey head and blue eyes of the village headman, from my father's Vladimir estate.

'Gvrilo Semenych,' I cried, and rushed to embrace him. This was the first of our own people, the first figure out of my former life, whom I met after imprisonment and exile. I could not take my eyes off the intelligent old man, and felt as though I would never say all I had to say to him. He was the living proof of my nearness to Moscow, to my horne, to my friends ; only three days before he had seen them all, he brought me greetings from them all. . . . So it was not so far away!

The governor, who was a clever Greek called Kuruta, had a thorough knowledge of human nature, and had long become indifferent to good and evil. He grasped my situation at once and did not make the slightest attempt to be a nuisance to me.

Official forms were not even referred to; he commissioned me and a master at the high-school to edit the Vladimir Provincial News-that was my only duty.

The work was familiar to me; in Vyatka I had put the unofficial part of the Provincial News on its feet, and had published in it an article which almost got my successor into trouble. Describing the festival on the Great River, I said that the mutton sacrificed to St Nicholas of Khlynov used in old days to be distributed to the poor, but now was sold. The bishop was incensed and the govemor had difficulty in persuading him to let the matter drop.

These provincial newspapers were introduced in 1837. The very original idea of training the inhabitants of the land of silence and dumbness to express themselves in print occurred to Bludov, the Minister of Horne Affairs. This man, famous for being chosen to continue Kararnzin's History, though he never actually added a line to it, and for being the author of the report of the committee of investigation into the affair of the 14th of December, which it would have been better not to write at all, belonged to the group of doctrinaire statesmen who appeared on the scene at the end of the reign of Alexander. They were intel-

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ligent, cultured, honourable old 'Arzamas geese'2 who had risen and grown old in the service. They could vvritc Russian, were patriots, and were so zealously engaged in the history of their native land that they had no time to give serious attention to its present condition. They all cherished the never-to-be-forgotten memory of N. M. Karamzin, loved Zhukovsky, knew Krylov by heart, and used to go to Moscow to converse with I. I. Dmitriyev in his house in Sadovaya Street, where I too visited him as a student, armed with romantic prejudices, a personaL acquaintance with N. Polevoy, and a concealed disapproval of the fact that Dmitriyev, who was a poet, should be Minister of Justice.

Great things were hoped of them, and like most doctrinaires of all countries they did nothing. Perhaps they might have succeeded in leaving more permanent traces under Alexander, but Alexander died and they were left with nothing but their desire to do something worth doing.

At Monaco there is an inscription on the tombstone of one of the hereditary princes: 'Here lies the body of Florestan So-andso-he desired to do good to his subjects.'3 Our doctrinaires also desired to do good, not to their own subjects but to the subjects of Nicholas Pavlovich. but they reckoned without their host. I do not know ·who hindered that Florestan, but these were hindered by om Florestan. They were dra\\·n into complicity in all the measures detrimental to Russia and had to restrict themselves to useless innovations, mere alternations of name and form. Every

!wad of a department among us thinks it his highest duty to produce at intervals a project, an innovation, usually for the worse but sometimes simply neutral. They thought it necessary for instance to call the secrPtary in the governor's office by a name of purely Russian origin,4 while they left the secretary of the provincial office untranslated i nto Russian.5 I remember that the Minister of Justice brought forward a plan for essential changes in the uniforms of civil sPrvants. This scheme opened in a maj<>stic and so!C'mn style: 'Taking into special consideration tlw lack of unity. of standard, in the make and pattern of certain uniforms in the civil department and adopting as a fundamental principlP,' and so on.

� ThP rf'fl'I"PllCP is to til!' ':\rzamas.' a litPrarv cluh of which Karamzin.

BatvushkoY, l'Ya ro\'. this Bl wlo\' and som<' ;ltlwrs wf're mpm)wrs. Th<•

tow.n :\ rzamas is noted for its geese. ( Tr.)

:< II " t·oulu lr hirn rf,· srs su;rts.

I 'l'rr11 itd' dl'i' ( } i t. ·m;mag••r of a ffil i rs' ) . ( /I . )

:; 'S,·kr.•/(Jr. ' ( II.)

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Possessed by the same mania for reform the Minister for Home Affairs replaced the rural assessors by police inspectors. The assessors lived in the towns and used to visit the villages. The police inspectors sometimes met together in the town but l ived permanently in the country. In this way all the peasants were put under the supervision of the police and this was done with full knowledge of the predatory, carnivorous, corrupt character of our police officials. Bludov introduced the policeman into the secrets of the peasants' industry and wealth, into their family life, into the affairs of the mir, and in this way laid his hand on the last refuge of peasant life. Fortunately our villages are very many and there are only two police inspectors in a district.

Almost at the same time the same Bludov had the notion of establishing provincial newspapers. In Russia, although the government has no regard for popular education, it has great literary pretensions, and while in England, for instance, there are no official organs, every one of our departments has i ts own magazine, and so have the universities and the academy. We have journals relating to mining, to dry-salting, French and German ones, naval and military ones. All these are published at the government expense; contracts for literary articles are made in the ministries exactly as contracts are for fuel and candles, but without competition ; there are plenty of statistics, invented figures and fantastic inferences from them. After monopolising everything else, the government has now taken the monopoly of talk and, imposing silence on everyone else, has begun chattering unceasingly. Continuing thi s system, Bludov c�mmanded every provincial government to publish its own newspaper, which was to have an unofficial part for articles on historical, litt>rary, and other subjects.

No sooner said than done, and the officials in fifty provinces were tearing tht>ir hair ovPr this unofficial part. Priests with a seminary education, doctors of medicine, high-school teachers, all who could be suspected of a tinge of culture and ability to spell correctly were requisitioned. After much reflection and reading over of the Library of Good Reading and the Notes of the Fatherland, with tremors and false starts they at last wrote the articles.

The desire to see one's name in print is one of the strongest artificial passions in a man who has been corrupted by this bookish age. Nevertheless it needs a special occasion to induce people to expose their efforts to public criticism. People who would never have dared to dream of their essays being printed in the Moscow News or in a Petersburg magazine, began to publish

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them at home. And, meanwhile, the fatal habit of having a newspaper, the habit of publicity, took root. And, indeed, it may not be amiss to have an instrument ready. The printing press, too, is an unruly member!O

6 At this point Herzen begins the story of his wife, Natalie-his first cousin and, like him, the illegitimate child of a wealthy aristocrat: her solitary and unhappy childhood, their courtship and early married life.

It takes up the last hundred pages of the first volume. They are omitted here-as are the last one hundred and seventy pages of the second volume, about their tragic later married life ( "A Family Drama") -for reasons of theme and space as explained in the Preface. ( D.M.)

M O S C O W,

P E T E R S B U R G

A N D

N O V G O R O D

( 1 8 4 0 - 1 8 4 7 )

Returtl to Moscow

and !Jltellectual Debctte

AT THE BEGINNING of 1 840 We left Vladimir and the poor, narrow River Klyazma. With anxiety and a heavy heart I left the little town where we were married. I foresaw that the same simple, profound intimate life would be no more, and that we should have to furl many of our sails.

Our long, solitary walks outside the town where, lost among the meadows, we felt so keenly the spring in nature and the spring in our hearts, would never come again. . . .

The winter evenings when, sitting side by side, we closed the book and listened to the crunch of sledge-runners and the j ingle of bells, that reminded us of the 3rd of March, 1 838, and our journey of the 9th of May1 would never come again. . . .

They would never come again!

In how many keys and for how many ages men have known and repeated that 'The May of life blossoms once and never again,'2 and yet the June of mature age with i ts hard, harvesttime work, with its stony roads, catches a man unawares. Youth, all unheeding, floats along in a sort of algebra of ideas, emotions and yearnings, is little interested in the particular, little touched by it; and then comes love, the unknown quantity found ; all i s concentrated o n one person, through whom everything passes, in whom the universal becomes dear, in whom the elegant becomes beautiful; then, too, the young are untouched by the external, they are given to each other, and about them let no grass grow!

But it does grow, together with the nettles and the thistles, and sooner or later they begin to sting or hook on to you.

We knew that we could not take Vladimir with us, but still we thought that our May was not yet over. I even fancied that in going back to Moscow I was going back once more to my student days. All the surroundings helped to maintain the illusion. The same house, the same furniture-here was the room where Ogarev and I, shut in together, used to conspire two paces away from the Senator and my father, and here was my father him-1 The dates of H.'s meeting in Moscow with his cousin Natalie, during H.'s secret visit, and of their arrival and marriage in Vladimir. (A.S.) 2 From Schiller's poem 'Resignation.' (A.S.)

229

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230

self, grown older and more bent, but just as ready to scold me for coming home late. 'Who i s lecturing tomorrow? When is the rehearsal? I am going from the university to Ogarev's . . . .' I t was 1833 over again!

Ogarcv \vas actually there.

He had received permission to go to Moscow a fe\v months before me. Again his house became a centre where old and new friends met. And although the old unity was no more, he was surrounded by all the nice people.

Ogarev, as I have had occasion to observe already, was endowed with a peculiar magnetism, a feminine quality of attraction. For no apparent reason others are drawn to such people and cling to them ; they warm, unite, and soothe them, they are like an open table at \vhich everyone sits down, renews his powers, rests, grows calmer and more stout-hearted, and goes away a friend.

His acquaintances swallowed up a g1·eat deal of his time; he suffered from this at times, but he kept his door open, and met e\·eryon<' \\·ith his gentle smile. Many people thought it a great weakness. Yes, time was lost and wasted, but love was gained, not only of intimate friends, but of outsiders, of the weak: and that is worth as much as read ing and other interests.

I have never been able to understand cleady how it is that people like Ogari;v can be accused of idleness. The standards of the factory and the workhouse hardly apply here. I remember that in our student days Vadim and I were once sitting over a glass of Rhine wine when he became more and more gloomy, and suddPnly \vith tPars in his eyes, repeated the words of Don Carlo sa ( \Vho quoted them from Julius Caesar) : 'Twenty-three and nothing done for immortality ! ' This so mortified him that he brought his open hand down with all his might on the green wine-glass and cu t it badly. All that is so, but neither Caesar nor Don Carlos and Posa. nor Vadim and I explained why we must do sonwthing for immortality. There is work and it has to be done. and is it to be don<' for the sake of the work, or for the sake of being r<'mcmben·d bv mankind?

All that is somewhat ob<;cure: and what is work?

vVork. business.� . . . Officials recognisl' as such only civil and criminal affairs: thl' mf'rchant regards as work nothing but commPrCI' : mil itarv Inl'll call it their \York to strut about like

:l I n Srhilll'r's play of that n;1 nu•. Act II. sc<'n<' 2. ( A .S.)

·l Engl ish in till' original. ( Tr.)

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cranes and to be armed from head to foot in time of peace. To my thinking, to serve as the link, as the centre of a whole circle of people, is a very great work, especially in a society both disunited and fettered. No one has reproached me for idleness, a nd many people have liked some of the things I have done ; but do they know how much of all that I have done has been the reflection of our talks, our arguments, the nights we spent idly strolling about the streets and fields, or still more idly sitting over a glass of wine?

The circle of young people that formed itself round Ogarev was not our old circle. Only two of his old friends, besides ourselves, were in it. Tone, interests, pursuits, all had changed. Stankevich's friends took the lead in it; Bakunin and Belinsky stood at their head, each with a volume of Hegel's philosophy in his hand, and each filled with the youthful intolerance inseparable from vital, passionate convictions.

Stankevich, a lso one of the idle people who accomplish nothing, was the first disciple of Hegel in the circle of young people in Moscow. He had made a profound study of German philosophy, which appealed to his aesthetic sense: endov1;ed with exceptional abilities, he drew a large circle of friends into his favourite pursuit. Thi s circle was extremely remarkable: from it came a rrgular legion of savants, \'\Titers and professors, among whom were Belinsky, Bakunin and Granovsky.

Before our exile there had been no great sympathy between our circle and Stankevich's. They disliked our almost exclusively political tendency, while we disliked their almost exclusively speculative interests. They considered us to be Frondeurs and French, we thought them sentimentalists and German. The first man who was acknowledged both by us and by them, who held out the hand of friendship to both and by his warm love for both and his conciliating character removed the last traces of mutual misunderstanding, was Granovsky; but when I arrived in Moscow he \vas still in Berlin. and poor Stankevich at the age of twenty-seven was dying on the shore of the Lago di Como.

Sickly in constitution and gentle in character, a poet and a dreamer, Stankevich was naturally bound to prefer contemplation and abstract thought to living and purely practical questions; his artistic idealism suited him; it was 'the crown of victory' set on the pale, youthful brow that bore the imprint of

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death. The others had too much physical vigour and too little poetical feeling to remain long absorbed in speculative thought without passing on into life. An exclusively speculative tendency is utterly opposed to the Russian temperament, and we shall soon see how the Russian spirit transformed Hegel's teaching and how the vitality of our nature asserted itself in spite of all those who took the tonsure of philosophical monasticism. But at the beginning of 1 840 the young people surrounding Ogarev had as yet no thought of rebelling against the letter on behalf of the spirit, against the abstract on behalf of life.

My new acquaintances received me as people do receive exiles and old champions, people who come out of prison or return from captivity or banishment, that is, with respectful indulgence, \Vith a readiness to receive us into their alliance, though at the same time refusing to yield a single point and hinting at the fact that they are 'to-day' and we are already 'yesterday,' and exacting an unconditional acceptance of Hegel's Phenomenology and Logic, and their interpretation of them, too.

They discussed these subjects incessantly ; there was not a paragraph in the three parts of the Logic, in the two of the Aesthetic, the Encyclopaedia, and so on, which had not been the subject of desperate disputes for several nights together. People who loved each other avoided each other for weeks at a time because they disagreed about the definition of 'all-embracing spirit,' or had taken as a personal insult an opinion on 'the absolute personality and its existence in itself.' Every insignificant pamphlet published in Berlin or other provincial or district towns of German philosophy \vas ordered and read to tatters and smudges, and the leaves fell out in a fe\v days, if only there was a mention of Hegel in it. Just as Francoeur in Paris wept with emotion when he heard that in Russia he was taken for a great mathematician and that all the younger generation made use of the same letters as he did when they solved equations of various powers, tears might have been shed by all those forgotten vVerders, Marheinekes, Michelets, Ottos, Watkes, Schallers, Rosenkranzes, and even Arnold Ruge himsel£,5 whom Heine so wonderfully well dubbed 'the gate-keeper of Hegelian philos-5 Arnold Huge ( 1 802-80) began his political carePr with six years' imprisonment in connection with the Burschrrzschaft mov!'ment, founded the Drutsche Jahrbiicher, the journal of the Young Hegelian School. and some ten years later Die Reform, a more definitely political paper. From 1 849 he Ji,·ed in England, advocated a universal democratic state, and wrote many books, of which his autobiography is now of most interest.

( Tr.)

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ophy,' if they had known wha t bloodshed, what declarations they were exciting in Moscow between the Maroseyka and the Mokhovaya,6 how they were being read, and how they were being bought.

The young philosophers adopted a conventional language; they did not translate philosophical terms into Russian, but transferred them whole, even, to make things easier, leaving all the Latin words in crudo, giving them orthodox terminations and the seven Russian cases.

I have the right to say this because, carried away by the current of the time, I wrote myself exactly in the same way, and was actually surprised when Perevoshchikov, the well known astronomer, described this language as the 'twittering of birds.'

No one in those days would have hesitated to write a phrase l ike this: 'The concretion of abstract ideas in the sphere of plastics presents that phase of the self-seeking spirit in which, defining itself for itself, it passes from the potentiality of natural immanence into the harmonious sphere of pictorial consciousness in beauty.' It is remarkable that here Russian words, as in the celebrated dinner of the generals of which Yermolov spoke, sound even more foreign than Latin ones.

German learning-and it is its chief defect-has become accustomed to an artificial, heavy, scholastic language of its own, just because it has lived in academies, that is, in the monasteries of idealism. It is the language of the priests of learning, a language for the faithful, and none of the catechumens understood it. A key was needed for it_ as for a letter in cypher. The key is now no mystery; when they understood it, people \Vere surprised that very sensible and very simple things were said in this strange jargon. Feuerbach was the first to begin using a more'

human language.

The mechanical copying of the German ecclesiastico-scientific jargon was the more unpardonable' sinn· the leading characteristic of our language is thP extraord inarY pase with which eVf'rything is expressPd in it-abstract idPas, the lvrical emotions of the heart, 'lifp's momP-like fl itting,'' thP cry of indignation, sparkling mischiPf. and shaking passion.

6 V. P. Botkin liYcd in thP Maroseyka, and GranoYsky, Belinsky and Bakunin stayed with him there at Yarious times. :Moscow Uniwrsity is in the MokhoYaya. (A.S.)

7 From A. S. Pushkin: Verses IVrillen during a Night of S!ecplt•ssncss.

(A.S.)

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Another mistake, far graver, went hand in hand with this distortion of language. Our young philosophers distorted not merely their phrases but their understanding; their attitude to life, to reality, became schoolboyish and literary; it was that learned conception of simple things at which Goethe mocks with such genius in the conversation of Mephistopheles with the student. Everything that in reality was direct, every simple feeling, was exalted into abstract categories and came back from them without a drop of living blood, a pale, algebraic shadow. In all this there was a naivete of a sort, because it was all perfectly sincere. The man who went for a walk in Sokolniky went in order to give himself up to the pantheistic feeling of his unity with the cosmos; and if on the way he happened upon a drunken soldier, or a peasant woman who got into conversation with him, the philosopher did not simply talk to them, but defined the essential substance of the people in its immediate and fortuitous manifestation. The very tear that started to the eye was strictly referred to its proper classification, to Gemuth or 'the tragic in the heart.'

It was the same thing in art. A knowledge of Goethe, especially of the second part of Faust (either because it is inferior to the first or because it is more difficult), was as obligatory as the wearing of clothes. The philosophy of music had a place in the foreground. Of course. no one ever spoke of Rossini ; to Mozart they were indulgent, though they did think him childish and poor. To make up for this they carried out philosophical investigations into every chord of Beethoven and greatly respected Schubert, not so much, I think. for his superb melodies as for the fact that he chose philosophical themes for them, such a s 'The Omnipotence of God' and 'Atlas.' French literature--everything French in fact, and, incidentally, everything political alsoshared the interdict laid on Italian music.

From this it is easy to see on what field we were bound to meet anr1 do battle. So long as we were arguing that Goethe was objective but that his objectivity was subjective, while Schiller as a poet \vas subjective but that his subjectivity was objective, and vice versa, everything went peaceably. Questions that aroused more passion were not slo\v to make their appearance.

\'Vhile Hegel was Professor in Berlin, partly from old age, but twice as much from satisfaction with his position and the respect he enjoyed, he purposely screwed his philosophy up above the earthly level and kept himself in an ambience where all contemporary interests and passions became somewhat indistin-

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guishable, like buildings and villages seen from an air-balloon ; he did not like to be entangled in these accursed practical questions with which it is difficult to deal and which must receive a positive answer. How clamant this violent and insincere dualism was, in a doctrine which set out from the elimination of dualism, can be understood readily. The real Hegel was the modest Professor at Jena, the friend of Hoelderlin, who hid his Phenomenology under his coat when Napoleon entered the town; then his philosophy did not lead to Indian quietism, nor to the justification of the existing forms of society, nor to Prussian Christianity; then he had not given his lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, but had written things of genius such as the article on the executioner and the death penalty, printed in Rosenkranz's biography.

Hegel confined himself to the sphere of abstractions in order to avoid the necessity of touching upon empirical deductions and practical applications; the one domain which he, very adroitly, selected for the practical application of his theories was the calm, untroubled ocean of aesthetics. He rarely ventured into the light of day, and then only for a minute, wrapped up like an invalid; and even then he left behind in the dialectic maze just those questions that were most interesting to the modern man.

The extremely feeble intellects (Gans is the only exception), who surrounded him, accepted the letter for the thing itself and were pleased by the empty play of dialectics. Probably at times the old man felt sad and ashamed at the sight of the limited outlook of his excessively complacent pupils. If the dialectic method is not the development of the reality itself, the educating of it to think, so to speak, it becomes a purely external means of making a farrago of things run the gauntlet of a system of categories, an exercise in logical gymnastics, as it was with the Greek Sophists and the mediaeval schoolmen after Abelard.

The philosophical phrase which did the greatest harm, and in virtue of which the German conservatives strove to reconcile philosophy with the political regime of Germany-'all that is real is rational'-was the principle of sufficient reason and of the correspondence of logic and facts expressed in other words.

Hegel's phrase, wrongly understood, became in philosophy what the words of the Christian Girondist Paul once were:

'There is no power but from God.' But if all powers are from God, and if the existing social order is justified by reason, the struggle against it, if only it exists, is also justified. These two sentences accepted in their formal rr.eaning are pure tautology; but, tauwlogy or not, Hegel's phrase led straight to the recogni-

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tion of the sovereign authorities, led to a man's sitting with folded arms, and that was just \vhat the Berlin Buddhists wanted. However contrary such a view may be to the Russian spirit, our Moscow Hegelians were genuinely misled and a ccepted it.

Belinsky, the most a ctive, impulsive, and dialectically passionate, fighting nature, was at that time preaching an Indian stillness of contemplation and theoretical study instead of conflict.

He believed in that view and did not flinch before any ·of its consequences. nor was he held back by considerations of moral propriety nor the opinion of others, which has such terrors for the weak and those who lack independence. He was free from timidity for he was strong and sincere; his conscience was clear.

'Do you know that from your point of view,' I said to him, thinking to impress him with my revolutionary ultimatum, 'you can prove that the monstrous tyranny under which we live is rational and ought to exist?'

'There is no doubt about it,' answered Belinsky, and proceeded to recite to me Pushkin's 'Anniversary of Borodino.'

That was more than I could stand and a desperate battle raged bet\veen us. Our falling out reacted upon the others, and the circle fell apart into two camps. Bakunin wanted to reconcile, to explain, to exorcise, but there was no real peace. Belinsky, irritated and dissatisfied, went off to Petersburg, and from there fired off his last furious salvo at us in an article which he likewise called 'The Anniversary of Borodino.'

Then I broke off all relations with him. Bakunin, though he argued hotly, began to reconsider things ; his sound revolutionary judgment pushed him in another direction. Belinsky reproached him for weakness, for concessions, and went to such exaggerated extremes tha t he scared his own friends and admirers. The chorus were on Belinsky's side, and looked down upon us, haughtily shrugging their shoulders and considering us to be behind the times.

In the midst of this intestine strife I saw the necessity ex ipso fonte bibere and began studying Hegel in earnest. I even think that a man who has not lived through Hegel's Phenomenology and Proudhon's Contradictions of Political Economy, who has not passed through that furnace and been tempered by it, is not complete, not modem.

"'{hen I had grown used to Hegel's language and mastered his method, I began to perceive that he was much nearer to our viewpoint than to that of his followers; he was so in his early works, he was so everywhere where his genius had taken the bit

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between its teeth and had dashed forward oblivious of the Brandenburg Gate. The philosophy of Hegel is the algebra of revolution; it emancipates a man in an unusual way and leaves not one stone upon another of the Christian world, of the world of tradition that has outlived itself. But, perhaps with intention, it is badly formulated.

Just as in mathematics-only there with more justificationmen do not go back to the definition of space, movement, force, but continue the dialectical development of their laws and qualities; so also in the formal understanding of philosophy, after once becoming accustomed to the first principles, men go on merely drawing deductions. Anyone new to the subject, who has not stupefied himself by the method's being turned into a habit, grasps at just these traditions, these dogmas which have been accepted as thoughts. To people who have long been studying the subject, and are consequently not free from predilections, it seems astonishing that others should not understand things that are 'perfectly clear.'

How can anyone fail to understand such a simple idea as, for instance, 'that the soul is immortal and that what perishes is only the personality,' a thought so successfully developed in his book by the Berlin Michelet; or the still simpler truth that the absolute spirit is a personality, conscious of itself through the world, and at the same time having its own self-consciousness?

All these things seemed so easy to our friends, they smiled so condescendingly at 'French' objections, that for some time I was stifled by them and worked and worked to reach a precise understanding of their philosophic jargon.

Fortunately scholasticism is as little natural to me as mysticism, and I stretched its bow until the string snapped and the blindfold dropped from my eyes.

Two or three months later, Ogarev passed through Novgorod. He brought me Feuerbach's Wesen des Christenthums; after reading the first pages I leapt up with joy. Down with the trapping of masquerade; away with the stammering allegory! We are free men and not the slaves of Xanthos;8 there is no need for us to wrap the truth in myth.

In the heat of my philosophic ardour I began my series of R Aesop is said to have been the slave of Xanthos, a philosopher of Samos.

(R.)

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articles on 'Dilettantism in Science,' in which, among other things, I paid the doctor out.

Now let us go back to Belinsky.

A few months after his departure to Petersburg in 1 840 we arrived there too. I did not go to see him. Ogarev took my quarrel with Belinsky very much to heart; he knew that Belinsky's absurd opinion was a passing malady, and indeed I knew it too, but Ogarcv was kinder. At last by his letters he almost forced a meeting on us. Our interview was at first cold, unpleasant and strained, but neither Belinsky nor I was very diplomatic and in the course of trivial conversation I mentioned the article on 'The Anniversary of Borodino.' Belinsky jumped up from his seat and, flushing crimson, said with great simplicity,

'Well, thank God, we've come to it at last. Otherwise I am so stupid I should not have known how to begin . . . . You've won ; three or four months in Petersburg have done more to convince me than all the arguments. Let us forget this nonsense. It is enough to tell you that the other day I was dining at a friend's and there was an officer of the Engineers there ; my friend asked him if he would like to make my acquaintance. "Is that the author of the article on The Anniversary of Borodino' "? the officer asked him in his ear. "Yes." "No, thank you very much,"

he answered dryly. I heard it all and could not restrain myself. I pressed the officer's hand warmly and said to him: "You're an honourable man, I respect you . . . .

" What more would you

have?'

From that moment up to Belinsky's death we went hand in hand.

Belinsky, as was to be expected, fell upon his former opinion with all the stinging \'('hemence of his language and all his furious energy. The position of many of his friends was not very much to be envied. Plus royalistcs que lc roi, with the courage of misfortune they triPd to defend their theories, while not averse to an honourable truce. All those with sense and vitality went over to Belinsky's sidP; only the obstinate formalists and pedants held a loof. Some of thPm reached such a point of German suicide through dead, scholastic learning that they lost all living interest and were themsPlves lost without a trace. Others became orthodox Slavophils. Strange as the combination of Hegel and Stefan Yavorsky9 may appear, it is more possible than might be

!I S tefan Ya\'orsky was a famous monk and theologian of the eighteenth century. (Tr.)

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supposed; Byzantine theology is just such a superficial casuistry and play with logical formulas as Hegel's dialectics, formally accepted. Some of the articles in the Moskvityanin are a triumphant demonstration of the extremes to which, with talent, the sodomitical union of philosophy and religion can go.

Belinsky by no means abandoned Hegel's philosophy when he renounced his one-sided interpretation of it. Quite the contrary, it is from this point that there begins his living, apt, original combination of philosophical with revolutionary ideas. I regard Belinsky as one of the most remarkable figures of the period of Nicholas. After the libt>ralism which had somehow survived 182510 in Polevoy, after the gloomy article of Chaadayev,1 1 Belinsky appears on the scene with his caustic scepticism, won by suffering, and his passionate interest in every question. I n a series of critical articles he touches in season and out of season upon everything, true everpvhere to his hatred of authority and often rising to poetic inspiration. The book he was reviewing usually served him as a starting-point, but he a bandoned it half-way and plunged i nto some other question. The line 'That's what kindred are' in Onegin is enough for him to summon family life before the judgment seat and to pick blood relationships to pieces down to the last thread. What fidelity there is to his principles, what dauntless consistency, what adroitness in navigating between the shoals of the censorship, what boldness in his attacks on the literary aristocracy, on the writers of the first three grades, on the secretaries of state of literature who were always ready to defeat an opponent by foul means if not by fair, if not by criticism then by delation? Belinsky scourged them mercilessly, tearing to pieces the petty vanity of the conceited, limited writers of eclogues, lovers of culture, benevolence and tenderness; he turned into derision their dear, their heartfelt notions, the poetical dreams flO\vering under their grey locks, their naivete, hidden under an Anna ribbon.

How they hated him for it!

The Slavophils on their sidf' began their official existence with the war upon Belinsky; he drove them by his taunts to the murmolka and the zipum. 1 2 It is worth rcmf'mlwring that Belinsky had formerly written in Notes of the Fatherland, while 10 The accession of Nicholas I and execution of the Decembrists. ( D.J1.1. ) 11 His first 'Philosophical Letter,' published in the Telescope in 1 836.

( A .S.)

I :? Jl,furmolka, a peasant cap, and dpum, a long homespun peasant coat.

( Tr.)

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Kireyevsky began publishing his excellent journal under the title of The European; no better proof than these titles could be found to show that at first the difference was only between shades of opinion and not between parties.

Belinsky's articles were awaited with feverish expectation by the young people in Moscow and Petersburg from the 25th of every month. Half a dozen times the students would call in at the coffee-houses to ask whether Notes of the Fatherland had been receive':�.; the heavy volume was snatched from hand to hand. 'Is there an article by Belinsky?' 'Yes,' and it was devoured with feverish interest, with argument . . . and three or four cherished convictions and reputations were no more.

Sokobelev, the governor of the Peter-Paul fortress, might well say in jest to Belinsky \vhen he met him on the Nevsky Prospect:

'When are you coming to us? I have a nice warm little cell all ready that I am keeping for you.'

I have spoken in another book of Belinsky's development and of his literary activity; here I will only say a few words about the man himself.

Belinsky was very shy and quite lost his head in an unfamiliar or very numerous company; he knew this and did the most absurd things in his desire to conceal i t. Ketscher tried to persuade him to go to visit a lady; the nearer they came to her house the gloomier Belinsky became; he kept asking whether they could not go another day, and talked of having a head-ache.

Ketscher, who knew him, would accept no evasions. When they arrived Belinsky set off running as soon as he got out of the sledge, but Ketscher caught him by the overcoat and led him to be introduced to the lady.

He sometimes put in an appearance at Prince Ocloyevsky's literary-diplomatic evenings. At these there were crowds of people who had nothing in common except a certain fear of and aversion from each other: clerks from the embassies and Sakharov the archaPologist, pain tPrs and A. iVIPyendorf, seVf•ral councillors of state of the cultured sort, Ioakinth Bichurinl3 from Pekin, people who were half gendarmes and half literary men, others who were wholly gendarmes and not at all literary men. The hostess concealed her affliction at her husband's vulgar tastes, and gave way to them much as Louis-Philippe at the beginning 1 3 Ioakinlh Birhurin ( 1 i77- 1 853 ) . a monk and at one lime an archimand rite, head of the Orthodox i\Iission to Pekin, and later a translator from the Chinese in the i\Iinistry of Foreign Affairs. (Tr.)

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of his reign indulged his electors by inviting to the balls at the Tuileries whole rez-de-chaussee of suspender-craftsmen, chandlers, shoe-makers, and other worthy citizens.

Belinsky was utterly lost at these evenings, between a Saxon ambassador who did not understand a word of Russian and an official of the Third Division who understood even words that were not uttered. He was usually a iling for two or three days afterwards and cursed the man who had persuaded him to go.

One Saturday, since it was New Year's Eve, Odoyevsky took it into his head to mix a punch en petit comite when the principal guests had dispersed. Belinsky would certainly have gone away, but he was prevented by a barricade of furniture ; he was somehow stuck in a corner and a little table was set before him with wine and glasses on it; Zhukovsky in the white trousers of his uniform, with gold lace on them, sat down obliquely opposite him. Belinsky stood it for a long time but, seeing no chance of his lot improving, he began moving the table a little; the table yielded at first, but then lurched over and crashed to the floor, while the bottle of Bordeaux very deliberately began to empty itself over Zhukovsky. He jumped up, and the red wine trickled down his trousers; there was an uproar: one servant rushed up with a napkin to daub the wine on to the other parts of the trousers, and another picked up the broken wine-glasses . . . while this hubbub was g-oing on Belinsky disappeared and, near to death as he was, ran home on foot.

Dear Belinsky! for what a long time he was angry and upset at such incidents, with what horror he used to recall them, walking up and down the room and shaking his head without the trace of a smile!

But in that shy man, that frail body, there dwelt a mighty spirit, the spirit of a gladiator! Yes, he was a powerful fighter!

he could not preach or lecture; what he needed was a quarrel. If he met with no objection, if he was not stirred to irritatjon, he did not speak well, but when he felt stung, when his cherished convictions were called in qtwstion, whPn dw musdPs of his cheeks began to quiver and his voice to burst out, then he was worth seeing; he pounced upon his opponent like a panther, he tore him to pieces, made him a ridiculous, a piteous object, and incidentally developed his own thought, with unusual power and poetry. The dispute would often end in blood, which flowed from the sick man's throat; pale, gasping, with his eyes fixed on the man with whom he was speaking, he would lift his handkerchief to his mouth with shaking hand and stop, deeply mortified,

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crushed by his physical weakness. How I loved and how I pitied him at those moments!

Persecuted financially by the sharks of literature, morally persecuted by the censorship, surrounded in Petersburg by people for whom he had little sympathy, and consumed by a disease to which the Baltic climate was fatal, he became more and more irritable. He shunned outsiders, was farouche, and sometimes spent weeks together in melancholy inactivity. Then the publishers sent note after note demanding copy, and the enslaved writer, grinding his teeth, took up his pen and wrote the venomous articles quivering with indignation, the indictments which so impressed their readers.

Often, utterly exhausted, he would come to us to rest, and lie on the floor with our two-year-old child ; he would play with him for hours together. While we were only the three of us things went swimmingly, but if there came a ring at the bell, a spasmodic grimace passed over his face and he would look about him uneasily, trying to find his hat; then, with the weakness of a Slav, he would often remain. Here one word, a remark that was not to his liking, would lead to the most extraordinary scenes and arguments. . . .

Once he went in Holy Week to dine with a literary man, and Lenten dishes were served.

'Is it long,' he asked, 'since you became so devout?'

'We eat Lenten fare,' answered the literary gentleman, 'simply and solely for the sake of the servants.'

'For the sake of the servants,' said Belinsky, and he turned pale. 'For the sake of the servants,' he repeated, and flung down his dinner napkin. 'Where are your servants? I'll tell them that they are deceived. Any open vice is better and more humane than this contempt for the weak and uneducated, this hypocrisy in support of ignorance. And do you imagine that you are free people? You are on the same level as all the tsars and priests and slave-owners. Good-bye. I don't eat Lenten fare for the edification of others; I have no servants!'

Among the Russians who might be classified as inveterate Germans, there was one, a magister of our university, who had lately arrived from Berlin; he was a good-natured man in darkblue spectacles, stiff and decorous; he had come to a standstill for ever after upsetting and enfeebling his faculties with philosophy and philology. A doctrinaire and something of a pedant, he was fond of holding forth in edifying style. On one occasion, at a literary evening in the house of the novelist who kept the fasts for the sake of his servants, the magister was preaching some sort

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of honnete et modere twaddle. Belinsky was lying on a sofa in the corner and as I passed him he took me by the tail of my coat and said:

'Do you hear the rubbish that monster is talking? My tongue has long been itching, but my chest hurts a bit and there are a lot of people. Be a father to me, make a fool of him somehow, squash him, crush him with ridicule, you can do it better-come, cheer me up.'

I laughed and told Belinsky that he was setting me on like a bull-dog at a rat. I scarcely knew the gentleman and had hardly heard what he said.

Towards the end of the evening, the magister in the blue spectacles, after abusing Koltsov for having abandoned the national costume, suddenly began talking of Chaadayev's famous

'Letter,' and concluded his commonplace remarks, uttered in that didactic tone which of itself provokes derision, with the following words: 'Be that as it may, I consider his action contemptible and revolting: I have no respect for such a man.'

There was in the room only one man closely associated with Chaadayev, and that was I. I shall have a great deal to say about Chaadayev later on; I always liked and respected him and was liked by him ; I thought it was unseemly to let pass this savage remark. I asked him dryly whether he supposed that Chaadayev had had ulterior aims in writing his letter, or had been insincere.

'Certainly not,' answered the magister.

An unpleasant conversation followed ; I demonstrated to him that the epithets 'revolting and contemptible' were themselves revolting and contemptible when applied to a man who had boldly expressed his opinion and had suffered for it. He expatiated to me on the oneness of the people, the unity of the fatherland, the crime of destroying that unity, and of sacred things that must not be touched.

Suddenly Belinsky mowed down the speech I was making: he leapt up from his sofa, came up to me as white as a sheet, slapped me on the shoulder and said:

'Here you have them, they have spoken out-the inquisitors, the censors-keeping thought in leading-strings . . .' and so he went on and on.

He spoke with formidable inspiration, seasoning serious words with deadly sarcasms:

'We are strangely sensitive: men are flogged and we don't resent it, sent to Siberia and we don't resent it; but here Chaadayev, you see, has rubbed the people's honour the wrong

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way: he mustn't dare to talk; to speak is insolence-a flunkey must never speak ! V\!hy is it that in more civilised countries, where one would expect susceptibilities, too, to be more developed than in Kostroma and Kaluga, words are not resented?'

'In civilised countries,' replied the magister, with inimitable self-complacency, 'there are prisons in which they confine the senseless creatures who insult what the whole people respect

. . . and a good thing too.'

Belinsky seemed to tower: he was terrifying, great at that moment. Folding his arms over his sick chest and looking straight at the magister, he ansv•;ered in a hollow voice:

'And in still more civilised countries there is a guillotine to deal with those who think that a good thing.'

Having said this, he sank exhausted in an easy-chair and spoke no more. At the word 'guillotine' our host turned pale, the guests

'>vere disquieted and a pause follov•;ed. The magister had been annihilated, but it is just at such moments that human vanity takes the bit between its teeth. I. Turgenev advises a man, when he has gone such lengths in argument that he begins to feel frightened himself, to move his tongue ten times round the inside of his mouth before uttering a word.

The magister, unaware of this homely advice, went on babbling feeble trivialities, addressing himself rather to the rest of the company than to Belinsky.

'In spite of your intolerance,' he said at last, 'I am certain that

�·ou will agree with one . . .'

'No,' answered Belinsky; 'whatever you said I shouldn't agree with anything! '

Everyone laughed and went in to supper. The magister picked up his hat and went away.

Suffering and privation soon completely undermined Belinsky's sickly constitution. His face, particularly the muscles about his lips, and thl' mournfully.· fixl'cl look in his eves, testified equally to the intense workings of his spirit and the rapid dissolution of his body.

I saw him for the last time in Paris in the autumn of 1 847; he was in a very bad way and afraid of speaking aloud ; it was only at moments that his former energy revived and its ebbing fires glowed brightly. It was at such a moment that he wrote his letterH to Gogol.

14 TIH• reference is to the open letter in which Belinsky expressed his passionate indignation at the Correspondence with Friends, by Gogo!.

( Tr.)

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The news of the revolution of February found him still alive; he died taking its glow for the flush of the rising dawn!

So this chapter ended in 1 854; since that time much has changed. I have been brought much closer to that time, closer because of my increasing remoteness from people here, and through the arrival of Ogarev15 and by two books: Annenkov's Biography of Stankevich and the first parts of Belinsky's complete works. From the windows suddenly thrown open the fresh air of the fields, the young breath of spring was wafted into the hospital wards. . . .

Stankevich's correspondence was unnoticed when i t came out.

It appeared at the wrong moment. At the end of 1 857 Russia had not yet come to herself after the funeral of Nicholas; she was expectant and hopeful; that is the worst mood for reminiscences

. . . but the book is not lost. It will remain in the paupers' burialground one of the rare memorials of its times from which any man who can read may learn what in those days was buried without a word. The pestilential streak, running from 1 825 to 1855, will soon be completely cordoned off; men's traces, swept away by the police, will have vanished, and future generations will often come to a standstill in bewildermt>nt before a waste land rammed smooth, st>eking the lost channels of thought which actually were nevpr interrupted. The current was apparently checked : Nicholas tied up the main artery-but the blood flowed along side-channels. It is just these capillaries which have left their trace in the works of Belinsky and the correspondence of Stankevich.

Thirty years ago the Russia of the future existed exclusively among a few boys, hardly more than children, so insignificant and unnoticed that then• was room for them between the soles of the great boots of the autocracy and the ground-and in them was the hPritage of the 1 4th of December, the heritage of a purely national Russia, as well as of the learning of all humanity. This new life sprouted like the grass that tries to grow on tht> lip of a still smouldering crater.

In the very jaw of the monster these children stand out unlike other children ; they grow, develop, and begin to live an utterly different life. Weak, insignificant, unsupported-nay, on the contrary, persecuted by all, they may easily perish, leaving not the smallest trace, but they survive, or, if they die half-way, not 15 Og-arev. having- left Russia for ever, came to H. in London on 9th April, 1 856. (A.S. )

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everything dies \vith them. They are the rudimentary germs, the embryos of history, barely perceptible, barely existing, like all embryos in general.

Little by little groups of them are formed. What is more nearly akin to them gathers round their centre-points; then the groups repel one another. This dismemberment gives them width and many-sidedness for their development; after developing to the end, that is to the extreme, the branches unite again by whatever names they may be called-Stankevich's circle, the Slavophils, or our little coterie.

The leading characteristic of them all is a profound feeling of alienation from official Russia, from their environment, and at the same time an impulse to get out of it-and in some a vehement desire to get rid of it.

The objection that these circles, unnoticed both from above and from below. form an exceptional, an extraneous, an unconnected phenomenon. that the education of the majority of these young people was pxotic, strang!', and that they sooner express a translation into Russian of French and German ideas than anything of their own, seems to us quite groundless.

Possibly at the Pnd of th!' last century and the beginning of this there was in the aristocracy a fringe of Russian foreigners who had sundPred all ti!'s with the national J ifp ; but they had neither living int!'rPsts. nor coteries based on convictions, nor a literaturP of th!'ir own. ThPy wer!' sterile and became extinct.

Victims of PPter's brPak with the people, they remained eccentric and whimsical, they were not merely superfluous but undeserving of pity. The war of 1 81 2 sPt a tPrm to them-the older gPnt'ration were living out their time, and none of the younger dev!'lopt>d in tha t dirPction. To includ!' among them men of the stamp of P. Ya. Chaadaypv would be a most fearful mistake.

Protest, r!'jt>ction, hatrt>d of one's country if you will, has a completely different significanc!' from indifferent aloofness.

Bvron, lashing at English life, fiPeing from England as if from the plaguP, remained a typical Englishman. Ht>ine, trying, from anger at th!' abominahlt> political condition of G!'rmany, to turn FrPnchman. rpmainPd a g<>nnint> German. The highest protest aga inst Judaisw-Christianity-is lill!'d with the spirit of Judaism . ThP rupturp of thP sta ll'S of North America with England could lead to war and hatrt>d, hut it could not make the North Americans un-English.

As a rule it is with great difficulty that men abandon their physiological IIIPIIIories and the mould in which they are cast by

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heredity; to do so a man must be either peculiarly unpassioned and featureless or absorbed in abstract pursuits. The impersonality of mathematics and the unhuman objectivity of nature do not call forth those sides of the soul and do not awaken them ; but as soon as we touch upon questions of life, of art, of morals, in which a man is not only an observer and investigator but at the same time himself a participant, then we find a physiological limit-which it is very hard to cross with one's old blood and brains unless one can erase from them all traces of the songs of the cradle, of the fields and the hills of home, of the customs and whole setting of the past.

The poet or the artist in his truest work always belongs to the people. Whatever he does, whatever aim and thought he may have in his work, he expresses, \vhether he will or not, some elements of the popular character and expresses them more profoundly and more clearly than the very history of the people.

Even whf'n renouncing !'verything national, the artist does not lose the chief features from which it can be recognised to what people he belongs. Both in the Greek lphigcnia and in the Oriental Divan Goethe was a German. Poets really are, as the Romans called thf'm, proph!'ts; only they utter not what is not and what will be by chance, but what is unrecognised, what exists in the dim consciousness of the masses, what is already slumbering in it.

Everything that has !'xisted from time immemorial in the soul of the Anglo-Saxon p!'oplP is held together, as if by a ring, by personality alone; and every fibre, every hint, every attempt, which has slovdy come down from generation to generation, unconscious of itself, has taken on form and language.

Probably no one supposes that the England of the time of Elizabeth-particularly the majority of the people-had a precise understanding of Shakespeare; they have no precise understanding of him even now-but then they have no precise understanding of themselvPs either. But when an Englishman goes to the theatre he understands Shakespeare instinctively, through sympathy, of that I have no doubt. At the moment when he is listening to thf' play, something becomes clearer and more familiar to him. One would have thought tha t a people so capable of rapid comprehension as the French might have understood Shakespeare too. The character of Hamlet, for instance, is so universally human, especially in the stage of doubts and irresolution, in the consciousness of some black d!'eds being perpetrated round about tllf'm, some betrayal of the great in

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favour of the mean and trivial, that it is hard to imagine that he should not be understood; but in spite of every trial and effort, Hamlet remains alien to the Frenchman.

If the aristocrats of the last century, who systematically despised everything Russian, remained in reality incredibly more Russian than the house-serfs remained peasants, it is even more impossible that the younger generation could have lost their Russian character because they studied science and philosophy from French and German books. A section of the Slavs at Moscow, with Hegel in their hands, attained the heights of ultra

Slavism.

The very appearance of the circles of which I am speaking was a natural response to a profound, inward need in the Russian life of that time.

We have spoken many times of the stagnation that followed the crisis of 1 825. The moral level of society sank, development was interrupted, everything progressive and energetic was struck out of life. Those who remained-frightened, weak and bewildered-were petty and insignificant; the trash of the generation of Alexander occupied the foremost place ; little by little they changed into cringing officials, lost the savage poetry of junketing and lordliness together with any shadow of independent dignity; they served tenaciously, they served until they reached high positions, but they never became great personages. Their day was over.

Below this grPat world of society, the great world of the people maintained an indifferent silence; nothing was changed for them: their plight was bad, but no worse than before, the new blows fell not on their brui�ecl backs. Their time had not yet come. Between this roof and this foundation the first to raise their heads \Vere children, perhaps because they did not suspect how dangerous it was ; but, let that be as it might, with these children Russia, stunned and stupefied, began to come to herself.

What halted them was the complete contradiction of the words they were taught with the facts of life around them. Their teachers, their books, their university spoke one language and tha t language was intelligible to heart and mind. Their father and mother, their relations, and their whole environment spoke another with which neither mind nor heart was in agreementbut with which th<> dominant authorities and financial interests were in accord. This contradiction between education and custom nowhere reachPd such dimensions as among the nobility and gen try of Russia . The shaggy German student with his round

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cap covering a seventh part of his head, with his world-shaking pranks, is far nearer to the German Spiessburger than is supposed, and the French collegien, lank from vanity and emulation, is already en herbe l'homme raisonnable qui exploite sa position.

The number of educated people amongst us has always been extremely small; but those who were educated have always received an education, not perhaps very comprehensive, but fairly general and humane: it made men of all with whom it succeeded. But a man was just what was not wanted either for the hierarchical pyramid or for the successful maintenance of the landowning regime. The young man had either to dehumanise himself again-and the greater number did SO---{)r to stop short and ask himself: 'But is it absolutely essential to go into the service? Is i t really a good thing to be a landowner?'

After that there followed for some, the weaker and more impatient, the idle existence of a cornet on the retired list, the sloth of the country, the dressing-gown, eccentricities, cards, wine; for others a time of ordeal and inner travail. They could not live in complete moral disharmony, nor could they be satisfied with a negative attitude of withdrawal ; the stimulated mind required an outlet. The various solutions of these questions, all equally harassing for the younger genera tion, determined their distribution into various circles.

Thus our coterie. for instance, was formed, and at the university it met Snngurov's, already in existence. His, like ours, was concerned rather with politics than \Vith learning. Stankevich's circle, which came into being at the same time, was equally near both and equally remote· from both. He went by another path: his interests were purely theoretical .

Between 1 830 and 1 840 our convictions were too youthful, too ardent and passionate, not to be exclusive. vVe could feel a cold respect for Stankevich's circle, but we could not be intimate with its members. They traced philosophical systems, were absorbed in self-analysis, and found peace in a luxurious pantheism from which Christianity was not excluded. vVe were dreaming how to get up a new league in Russia on the pattern of the Decembrists and looked upon learning i tself as a means to our end. The government did its best to strengthen us in our revolutionary tendencies.

In 1 833 all Sungurov's circle was sent into exile andvanished.

In 1 835 we were exiled. Five years later we came back,

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tempered by our experience. The dreams of youth had become the irreversible determination of maturity. This was the most brilliant period of Stankevich's circle. Stankevich himself I did not find in Moscow-he was in Germany; but it was just a t that moment that Belinsky's articles were beginning to attract the attention of everyone.

On our return we measured our strength with them. The battle was an unequal one ; basis, weapons, and language-all were different. After fruitless skirmishes we saw that it was our turn now to undertake serious study and we too set to work upon Hegel and the German philosophy. When we had sufficiently assimilated that, it became evident that there was no ground for dispute between us and Stankevich's circle.

The latter was inevitably bound to break up. It had done its work, and had done it most brilliantly; its influence on the whole of literature and academic teaching was immense-it is enough to mention the names of Belinsky and Granovsky; Koltsov was formed in it, Botkin, Katkov, and others belonged to it. But it could not remain a closed circle without passing into German doctrinairism-men who are alive and are Russian are not capable of that.

Close to Stankcvich's circle, as well as ours, there was another, formed during our exile and in the same relationship to them as we were ; its members were afterwards called Slavophils. The Slavs approached from the opposite direction the vital questions which occupied us, and were far more deeply immersed in living work and real conflict than Stankevich's circle.

It was natural that Stankevich's society should split up between them and us. The Aksakovs and Samarin joined the Slavophils, that is, Khomvakov and the Kireyevskvs. Belinsky and Bakunin joined us. The closest friend of Stankevich, the most nearly akin to him in his whole nature, Granovsky, was one of us from the day he came back from Germany.

If Stankevich had lived, his circle would still have broken up.